Fernando Martín Peña

Acting

Fernando Martín Peña

Born 1968-11-12 · Buenos Aires, Argentina

Fernando Martín Peña is an Argentine teacher, film critic, researcher and collector. He has published several books on film topics since 1991. Since December 2006, he has been conducting "Filmoteca, temas de cine" at midnight on Argentine Public TV. As a researcher, Peña has been responsible for the recovery of several films that were deemed lost or incomplete, such as an unknown 16mm copy of the Fritz Lang classic film Metropolis.

Acting credits

Defect poster
NR

After finding the soundtrack of Tararira, the only Argentine surrealist film shot in 1936, lost since then, and starring their great-grand uncles, the Aguilar brothers set out to unravel the family history at the crossroads of the great political events of the 20th century. It is also a story of El Cuarteto Aguilar, a very particular music band, which had an openly lesbian member in the first half of the last century. The discovery of the soundtrack of the lost film leads to a documentary collage that travels through Argentina, Spain and other parts of the world to ask again, one hundred years later, if perhaps the revolution is not also an aesthetic.

Defect

2024

A Movie Man poster
7.0

The political history of Argentine film censorship narrated through the professional career of Néstor Gaffet (1928-1982), lawyer, film distributor and producer, publicist, occasional screenwriter, critic and teacher.

A Movie Man

2022

Continuará... poster
NR

The most transcendent and controversial event since the invention of the seventh art: the disappearance of photographic film. What for many people seems to be simply the result of technological evolution, brings with it paradoxes and contradictions that endanger photographic film heritage and accelerate its deterioration.

Continuará...

2024

Audaz se Eleva poster
1.0

A tour through the history of porn –among prejudice, taboos and myths–, from the moment it constituted itself as a genre until it became an industry. And, while we’re at it, a look on the chances of progressing in Argentina.

Audaz se Eleva

2016

76 89 23 poster
NR

This documentary pays homage to 76 89 03, the controversial 2000 film directed by Cristian Bernard and Flavio Nardini. 76 89 23 seeks to deconstruct the past and present from a socio-political, cultural and economic approach, exploring key moments in Argentine history.

76 89 23

2025

Vlasta, el recuerdo no es eterno poster
NR

When she made her first film in 1960, Vlasta Lah was the only woman to direct a sound feature film in Argentina. Her path was arduous and long: from her childhood in a country torn apart by war to her training at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, to her arrival in Argentina fleeing another war, where she became the most important assistant director at Estudios San Miguel. Through her personal correspondence and a meticulous investigation, her name will be rescued from oblivion.

Vlasta, el recuerdo no es eterno

2025

Tras los pasos de Superpocho poster
NR

Documentary that follows a group of filmmakers who investigate the existence of a Peronist superhero that Perón allegedly proposed to publish. They interview historians, graphic artists, and sociologists to reconstruct this figure, whose evidence was destroyed after the 1955 coup d'état and the persecution of Peronism.

Tras los pasos de Superpocho

2025

Fernando Martín Peña: La proyección del mundo poster
NR

After almost 20 years, Fernando Martín Peña returns to the Faculty of Arts of the National University of La Plata to teach the subject History of Cinema II. Little by little, the reflections, questions and contradictions of the students who wonder about the study of the history of cinema begin.

Fernando Martín Peña: La proyección del mundo

2021

Gombrowicz or The Immaturity poster
8.0

A documentary of absurdist humor that delves into the immaturity of Witold Gombrowicz, the controversial Polish writer who lived in Argentina and wrote the first existentialist novel.

Gombrowicz or The Immaturity

2024

Alfredo Li Gotti. Una pasión cinéfila poster
NR

Documentary about Argentine film collector Alfredo Li Gotti.

Alfredo Li Gotti. Una pasión cinéfila

2011

Voyage to 'Metropolis' poster
5.9

A documentary about the making of the final version of "Metropolis" by restoring all material from different sources.

Voyage to 'Metropolis'

2010

Soy lo que quise ser poster
6.5

Biographical documentary that traces the life of José Martínez Suárez, unconditional lover of cinema, president of the most important Film Festival of the continent. A lucid protagonist of his life and times.

Soy lo que quise ser

2018

Metropolis Refound poster
5.4

Argentinian film historians find a complete print of Fritz Lang's “Metropolis” (1927) at Buenos Aires Film Museum and take it to Germany for its restoration.

Metropolis Refound

2010

Another Cursed Movie poster
6.5

A history of Argentine horror cinema, from its beginnings in 1934 to present day. It is a path of defeat, dead-end streets and triumphs, where the protagonists will lead us through the lesser known hallways of local horror.

Another Cursed Movie

2023

Flesh on Flesh poster
3.8

Documentary on Argentine actress and sex symbol Isabel Sarli, including clips from her films and interviews with her and other actors.

Flesh on Flesh

2008

An Important Premiere poster
5.7

For many years, Buenos Aires, Argentina, was one of the best places in the world for a film buff; but from the mid-sixties onwards, successive authoritarian governments shaped the will of the spectators, dictating what could be seen and what could not, so that the true cinema lovers, in their desire to watch films, had no choice but to embark on the most extraordinary and strange adventures.

An Important Premiere

2015

Life in the Dark poster
6.3

It is an approach to the figure of Fernando Martín Peña, but it is also a film about cinema, about a transcendental movement in its history, its spaces and rituals.

Life in the Dark

2023

Behind the camera